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Tulane to host two artist talks with Prospect New Orleans

Dark Matter: An Evening with Cauleen Smith, right, and Courtney Bryan, left, a conversation between colleagues who create boundary-pushing art, is one of two artist events presented by the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South in partnership with Prospect New Orleans. (Photo from the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South)

Dark Matter: An Evening with Cauleen Smith and Courtney Bryan takes place Thursday, Jan. 25, at 7 p.m. in the Freeman Auditorium of the Woldenberg Art Center at Tulane University. Dark Matter is a conversation between colleagues who will explore technology, Afrofuturism and musicianship, realism and the divine, place and time travel, and the creative process and art of collaboration. Smith and Bryan both create art that pushes the boundaries of prescribed identities, in order to seek transcendence and greater social agency for all.

Smith strives to “undermine the assumptions that people have. Show people that no one — regardless of who they are — is locked into the perceptions of other people.”

“My intention has always been to share south Louisiana stories and the complex realities of life at the ends of the bayous.”

Prospect New Orleans artist Monique Verdin presents Heart and Land: An Evening with Monique Verdin on Wednesday, Jan. 31, at 7 p.m. in the Freeman Auditorium of Woldenberg Art Center. For decades, Verdin has documented the interconnectedness of culture, environment and economics in southeast Louisiana.

“Twenty years ago, I picked up a camera to document my Houma relatives living in the Yakne Chitto, in the heart of the Mississippi River Delta,” said Verdin. “What I've witnessed has been a cycle of heartbreak, from oil waste pits to hurricanes to catastrophic oil spills to rapid land loss due to sea-level rise and subsidence. My intention has always been to share south Louisiana stories and the complex realities of life at the ends of the bayous.”